


Abnormal No More

by Enisy



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Episode: s06e17 Normal Again, F/M, Psychological Horror, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25537240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enisy/pseuds/Enisy
Summary: A few months after the events ofNormal Again, Spike gets attacked by a Glarghk Guhl Kashmas’nik demon.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Abnormal No More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosemarycat5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosemarycat5/gifts).



_“William, you have a visitor.”_

_The voice was issuing from a massive neck, its Adam’s apple bobbing like a puppet on a string. It was probably attached to a head and a torso, but those were outside his purview at present. The wall on either side of the neck was startlingly white. The room as a whole was sparsely appointed, its few pieces of furniture illuminated by a sputtering, hissing arc lamp._

_“What is this?” he mumbled. Last thing he remembered, he’d been helping the Slayer off a couple of moldy-looking demons outside Warren’s hideout. His memory was fuzzy, and his legs had gone to sleep. When he tried to prop himself up, the act sent a jolt of pain through his arm. Something must have stabbed him there._

_“Do you know where you are, William?” the neck asked._

_Spike – he still thought of himself as Spike – flicked his eyes to take stock of his surroundings. A bed with an iron frame. A tray strewn with vials and syringes. Padded walls._

_He was in a bloody loony bin._

_Spike was clearly hallucinating, conjuring the same premise that had driven Buffy bonkers a few months ago. Those wankers must have summoned another Glarghk Guhl Kashmas’nik demon._

_“When I get my hands on Andrew,” he gritted, “I’ll shove that flute so far up his arse he’ll be playin’ the brown note for months.”_

_It wasn’t the doctor who responded, but a new, old, strange, familiar voice. The visitor. “William, what are you saying?”_

_Longing and terror swept over him in equal measures. Just within the doorway stood his mother, exactly as he’d last seen her, with her prim haircut and her affordable jewelry and her dowdy frock. At that point, his awareness also caught up with the fact that the doctor was not wearing scrubs, but regular, everyday clothes._

_He’d traveled back in time to the nineteenth century._

_“Mother,” he choked out. His throat had shrunk to the size of a penny._

_“Sweetheart, you haven’t touched your porridge.” Spike’s heart broke a bit at her beseeching tone and the sad twist of her mouth. “Doctor, has he shown no signs of improvement?”_

_The man sighed. “I fear not, Mrs. Pratt. He is quite obstinate about the existence of vampires and of this ‘Slayer’ who is supposed to vanquish them. In his delusions, he himself is such a vampire – although he recently joined forces with the Slayer to fight against his own kind. Frankly, the story does not boast much logical coherence.”_

_Spike ran a nervous hand through his hair, only to find it curly and wild and longer than it had been in decades. His mother was still addressing the doctor, as if they were the sole adults in the room._

_“He never mentioned vampires before he came here,” she muttered. “Back home, his hallucinations involved railroads and carriages.”_

_“That is true, Mrs. Pratt, but his psychosis can manifest in any number of ways. It all depends on the stimuli he receives from his environment. Although we are trying to separate your son from unwanted influences, we cannot keep constant vigil over him, and in his state, the smallest spark can incite a fire. We suspect one of his fellow patients planted this latest idea about vampires in his head – the young lady in the adjoining room.”_

_His mother knelt down in front of him. Her face was streaked with tears, which trickled to her high cheekbones and plunged off them like cataracts. “Darling, don’t you want to get better?”_

_His heartbeat picked up. (He had a_ heartbeat _now.)_

_“Mother, I – I don’t know,” stammered William._

_Spike._

_William._

“Spike. Spike!”

The ceiling of his crypt fractured and congealed a few times before it reached an equilibrium. He was lying on his bed, down in the lower level of the crypt. Gone was the soft-spoken doctor. His mother: gone. In their stead, Buffy was hovering over him.

“Boy, the Gaga Cashmere demon really beat the living daylights out of ya.”

Spike let it all wash over him: the mispronunciation of _Glarghk Guhl Kashmas’nik_ , the breezy tone and that astonishingly ill-chosen idiom. He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Bloody hell,” he opined.

“You can say that again.”

“Bloody hell.”

Buffy fidgeted uncomfortably. Spike, on the other hand, stayed quite still, while his awareness came unmoored from his body and floated away. For a few minutes, neither of them trusted themselves to speak.

“You’d think hell _would_ be kinda bloody, what with all the vampires skulking there, but when the Anaemic One led me down the Hellmouth, I didn’t –”

“I’ve never seen you dye your hair,” Spike cut in.

Buffy blinked at him. “What?”

“Your hair,” he repeated patiently. “’S not your natural color, but in all these years, I haven’t seen you purchase any hair products, and I haven’t seen you dye it, either. And that crap takes _hours_ , so I’d have noticed it.”

Spike felt more than a little stupid as soon as the words were out. Why did he care about that? What the hell did it matter? The origin of Buffy’s hair color had never caused so much as a stir in his gray matter before – but it niggled at him now.

“Spike, you don’t even have a _mirror_ here.” Buffy knitted her brows, leaning into him, as if readying herself for true love’s kiss. She went on talking: “Look, I know you feel, like, discombobulated right now, but I promise, whatever doubts you’re having, they’re all in your head. This is real. _I’m_ real.”

Spike nodded, but he was only half-listening. His skin felt cold – colder than usual. Did this chill come from the mausoleum? Or...

(He felt his arm jerk once, twice, and he clasped it with his hand.)

Or from an asylum with badly isolated walls?

_A few more days of porridge, and the blood lust overwhelmed him. Spike waited until the nurse had nipped out to grab some lunch. Then he bit his wrist open, even though his teeth were blunt and awkward, slowing down the whole process. The few drops he wrung out tasted gross, coppery, candy-sweet. Was this what he’d craved? Was this what he was after?_

_The sedative kicked like a mule._

_A mule that was possessed by Sweet._

_A mule tap-dancing to Chop Suey._

“Ground Control to Major Spike.”

The room changed again, and so did he. Spike felt his temperature plummet, his heart stop, his hair stiffen and dry. All his unlife, he had taken pains to separate himself from that tosser William, and this was tripping him up. Everything hurt. Nothing made sense. He aimed a glare at Buffy, as if she were responsible for his predicament.

“I used to hate you,” he observed. “I only started lovin’ you after” – he leafed through his biography for the first chapter on Buffy Summers – “after losing Drusilla and getting this bloody chip lodged in my brain.”

His fingers latched onto her shoulders, none too gently. It took a moment before Buffy’s expression sank in: she was worried. For him, or for herself?

“Spike, get a _grip_!”

She struggled out of his arms and punched him in the nose. Right hook. The pain flooded Spike with a dull, messed-up sense of nostalgia. It had been a while since the Slayer had done that. She was more likely to fuck him than fight him these days.

Then she reached out to touch his face.

“Buffy,” he sighed.

The Slayer stroked his cheek with uncharacteristic tenderness. Was she really that worried about him? Or was this a sign that his fantasy world was coming apart at the seams, and this was its last-ditch attempt to keep him there? His eyes kept scanning her face for faults, inconsistencies, but it was no good: her features were so dear to him, he didn’t even really register them anymore. It was like looking at his own shoes, or his favorite stanza from _Othello_.

“You just got to be patient,” she said. “Willow told me she has already prepared the antidote, but she needs to make some adjustments to ensure it works on vampires.”

_For when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, ’tis not long after but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at…_

“Spike.”

“Yeah,” he said uselessly.

Her hand was ice. Her hand was fire. Even when she’d been just a concept to him, a meddling murderous job title – _Slayer_ – Spike had never felt so terrified of Buffy Summers as he did now.

_There was a racket outside his room, loud enough that William got up to check it out. His door was ajar, and he pushed it open the rest of the way. There were two women out in the corridor. The first one sported a high-collared nurse’s uniform and was pulling the second one along by the elbow. The younger woman – the patient – was mumbling something about God and vampires and penitence. She caught his eye, and William recoiled in fear. Her dark hair shone like an oil spill against her white gown._

_As he watched, Drusilla suddenly gave two great spasms, as if she were having an epileptic seizure. When the nurse paused in her tracks to assuage her, she managed to break free of her hold; then she made a mad dash for William and slammed herself against him._

_“You’re still covered with her,” she giggled, all teeth. “The rabbit keeps looking at his watch, but be it morning or dusk, he knows he’ll be digging for worms. Mr. Thomas hasn’t invented a machine to douse this fire.” As the nurse pulled her away, she kept on screaming, “Doldrums! Doldrums!”_

_His arm jerked once, twice._

In the end, Spike didn’t flinch from the Slayer’s touch, but leaned into it.

“Magica De Spell better hurry up with the potion,” he groused. “My head’s like a bloody crossover episode with all the random cameos.”

Buffy’s lips pulled up on one side. Her smile was scored with hair-thin fissures and cracks, but he found it comforting all the same.

“Been there,” she replied, “done that. Got the ‘ _My sister is a ball of universe-destroying energy and I’m okay with it_ ’ T-shirt.”

“My girlfriend’s a vampire slayer and I’m okay with it,” Spike said sheepishly. That’d probably earn him another punch, but whatever.

Strangely enough, Buffy didn’t voice her opposition to the term. “Make sure to specify the font before you order the shirt,” she joked. “You don’t wanna end up with Comic Sans.”

“Don’t worry, Slayer – I know you want to keep our relationship on the down low, so I’ll prolly ask for Wingdings.”

Buffy snorted, and it was the sweetest sound in the whole world.

Blue pill or red pill, Spike didn’t give a rat’s arse. He didn’t need convincing, he’d swallow either one – as long as the resulting universe had this girl in it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [enisywrites](https://enisywrites.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Come on over if you want to drop me a prompt or a question, or if you just want to say hi!


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